~ The unlikely saga of a middle-aged mom of twin second-graders and an Athena triathlete ~

Monday, November 20, 2006

Another track workout with Garmin Forerunner 305

Went over to the track again with my training buddy David for some running with no special plan in mind, just do a little faster-than-normal running to remind my legs that they have to carry me through a 10K this Friday. Again, the heart rate readings (red) look kind of flaky (higher in some of the walk intervals than in the faster run laps), but the speeds (blue) are fairly straightforward.

Jog 1 mile to warm up.

Walk 1 lap = quarter mile.

Run faster 1 lap (I had planned 2 laps for ~800m, but died and stopped at 1. Still, it was a quarter-mile PR: 1:55 or 7:40 min/mile pace. Yay!!!)

Walk 1 lap.

Run faster 1 lap (slowed to 2:05).

Walk 1 lap.

Jog 1 more mile for what I planned to be my warmdown.

Walk 1 lap. Then David told me he wanted to go for an hour.

Jog 4 more laps until it was too dark to read the Garmin.

I'm not sure how I feel about this 10K on Friday. This is the sum total of any speedwork I've done for at least the last 6 months. It's at my local YMCA so I have no excuses not to show up. It's supposed to rain. It might be a long cold slog. Then again, it might be a bracing fall road running adventure. We'll see!

I do like the Garmin Forerunner 305 and can see how it would get highly addicting (even without reading the manual or trying out some of the fancier features like auto-lap or virtual running partner). I'm going to try to postpone buying one until the number on the scale says 25 pounds less. Unless I can't stand it any more and JUST HAVE TO HAVE ONE NOW. Unlike Mipper and Bolder, I'm not real big on this Delayed Gratification crap.

Meanwhile, in other Fun Toy News, my SwiMp3 ($138 on sale) arrived yesterday. I'll try to get it loaded with music tomorrow. This is my FIRST MP3 device, since I'm militantly opposed to using them while running and especially cycling, so I have to accumulate some songs on my computer now from scratch. I hope to have it ready to swim with on Wednesday, and subsequently I'll post a full review.

8 comments:

Keep up the good work - you are taling me out of running out to buy a Garmin 305. It's cool - but not so very cool. I have a 201 and I have a HRM so for now I will run them separatly and dream of the day I don't have to replace my lost glasses (WAH!) and recover from replacing my head lights that got smashed when I hit a deer (bigger WAH!) and then there's the little matter of a wedding to pay for and college tuition and.... food. The 305 can wait.

I'm drooling. I've officially asked Santa for a 205.....a 305 if i've been extra good, but a 205 would make me happy as I have a HR monitor already and can imagine using it sometimes (like on a treadmill) when I don't need to be draining the garmin battery. besides, i'm an athlete on a budget (and so is Santa) and every $$ counts.

I bet you'll be surprised at how you do in the race. Remember you just did 127.5 miles, so 6.2 should feel easy (relatively speaking). One thing I've noticed with first time Ironmen/women (and those who participated but may not have finished), the whole experience puts them on a new level of endurance, even if not speed. Its obvious from recent biking that you are past the beginner stage.

Nancy, I have a 301, and I love it. It's not perfect, and that use to drive me nuts. I find that the biggest downfall is that the instantaneous readings are too erratic – for example, if you are watching your pace, it can swing from 7min/mile to 9min/mile very easily, without you actually changing pace. BUT – for some reason, it all averages out properly, and for the most part, records actual mileage, and actual pace properly over your selected unit length (e.g. 1 mile or 1 km). This effect is apparent in the heart rate readings too. Effectively making the low-level and high-level alarm features useless. Also, just for the record, it doesn’t use an altimeter to measure altitude, so your altitude graphs will never look as nice as Polar. However, I’ve gotten through those deficiencies, and now use it for what it does best – gives me a pretty accurate distance measurement, and pretty accurate split times. For me, that alone is worth the price. If you wanted to save a few bucks, you could probably find a 301 on clear out somewhere for under $200.

Yeah, I'm good with my cheapie heart rate meter right now, but I'd like something downloadable after the workout so I could take a look at it. But it doesn't seem that the Garmin HRM is accurate enough for me.

I keep waiting for the next generation of gizmo to come out - maybe it's not quite time yet! Anybody have any inside info on product development at Garmin?